Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris
Sep. 1st, 2009 08:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
slowfoxSecond book in the Sookie Stackhouse series, and we move away from Bon Temps, Louisiana to Dallas, Texas, where Sookie's telepathic powers are required to help a different vampire clan locate a missing member.
This book opens the stage up a little more: in the first instalment, we were pretty much confined to Sookie's home town, and even getting Bill to Dallas proves an operation itself (sunlight 'n all that).
We also meet some humans who are somewhat less than overjoyed to have discovered that there are vampires living in their midst: The Fellowship of the Sun are one such group - they have a repentant vampire who wishes to 'meet the dawn' to atone for his sins, and they're turning it into a big media event, but they also use this vampire to entrap Sookie's contact's missing clan member, so as to offer the faithful a two-for-one burning deal.
You start to discern how the vamps are organised. In Sookie's town, Eric is higher than Bill in the stratification - Eric's older, and I think that's how seniority is determined. Meanwhile, over in Dallas, it's Stan who's the clan leader (and he has a *lot* of vamps to hand).
Then, since vamps are real, and since we learned that shapeshifters were real in the first instalment, we get to discover that Dallas also has an established were-community. Well, actually, there are shapeshifters and Werewolves proper, who guard their name quite jealously. However, unlike the vamps, who've embraced public living since the Japanese invented synthetic, drinkable blood, the other beasts are trying to keep under the radar, watching how the public take to the vamps (lots of people are unsure) before deciding whether or not to step into the limelight themselves.
And then there's a murder plot that bookends the main story; one of Sookie's colleagues gets killed, and the discovery of whodunnit takes basically the whole book.
Sookie goes through a whole lot of pain in this one - I s'pose it's fortuitous for her that her boyfriend is a vamp, and thus has healing blood and that stuff, but... well, it's still hard on her.
I like the books, though... next up is Club Dead.
This book opens the stage up a little more: in the first instalment, we were pretty much confined to Sookie's home town, and even getting Bill to Dallas proves an operation itself (sunlight 'n all that).
We also meet some humans who are somewhat less than overjoyed to have discovered that there are vampires living in their midst: The Fellowship of the Sun are one such group - they have a repentant vampire who wishes to 'meet the dawn' to atone for his sins, and they're turning it into a big media event, but they also use this vampire to entrap Sookie's contact's missing clan member, so as to offer the faithful a two-for-one burning deal.
You start to discern how the vamps are organised. In Sookie's town, Eric is higher than Bill in the stratification - Eric's older, and I think that's how seniority is determined. Meanwhile, over in Dallas, it's Stan who's the clan leader (and he has a *lot* of vamps to hand).
Then, since vamps are real, and since we learned that shapeshifters were real in the first instalment, we get to discover that Dallas also has an established were-community. Well, actually, there are shapeshifters and Werewolves proper, who guard their name quite jealously. However, unlike the vamps, who've embraced public living since the Japanese invented synthetic, drinkable blood, the other beasts are trying to keep under the radar, watching how the public take to the vamps (lots of people are unsure) before deciding whether or not to step into the limelight themselves.
And then there's a murder plot that bookends the main story; one of Sookie's colleagues gets killed, and the discovery of whodunnit takes basically the whole book.
Sookie goes through a whole lot of pain in this one - I s'pose it's fortuitous for her that her boyfriend is a vamp, and thus has healing blood and that stuff, but... well, it's still hard on her.
I like the books, though... next up is Club Dead.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-01 01:21 pm (UTC)Will be stronger and resist reading next review, hopefully.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-01 03:24 pm (UTC)I'll put the next review behind a cut!
no subject
Date: 2009-09-02 12:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-06 08:26 am (UTC)Living dead in Dallas
Date: 2009-09-15 08:00 pm (UTC)Interestingly Lafayette in the TV series True Blood has a much bigger role. He's a lead character and even has a female cousin who's been best friends with Sookie since school.
Re: Living dead in Dallas
Date: 2009-09-15 08:36 pm (UTC)complainingmentioning *cough* toHee - you've read two in two days! You're almost as bad as me! :-P
Things get increasingly more complex as the books progress, and the Sookieverse just grows organically as we go on. It's all quite impressive, actually.
La Harris does make an issue of race in the books, presumably echoing the Deep South within which they're set, but I do wish that she'd make a little more of some of the black characters. So I'm glad to hear that Lafayette gets more of a role in the TV series (which, btw, I am so getting next month).